What if I am asked an interview question that I have seen before?.... thread

Leading a team of 30 mock interviewers and having data points of 1500+ mock interviews at {S30}, here is my take on this.

Within first 30 seconds the interviewer will know if you have seen the question.

Be forthcoming and tell the interviewer

"I might have seen the problem before"

*might* here is very important. Why?

Because I have seen students who have practiced a problem even 3/4 times, end up messing it up in real interviews.

Good Interviewers will not changes the questions.

But they will calibrate you on

1) Alternate approaches.
2) Using different DS in same problem.
3) A follow up question on the same problem.

Now you might have produced a great solution with your memory muscle

...but tackling above three need you to fall back to the basics of DS and Algos.

Thats why I say that knowing the questions before hand might not help you in top tech interviews.

So when ever your friend tell you these two scenarios.

1. "I had given the correct solution, still they did gave me a call for next round"

Its because they messed up on one of three above. They might have done 300 LC problems but their basics are not clear.

2. "I think I got lucky because I had seen this problem."

These category of friends have better basics (they don't know yet) and are good ones to team up for mock interviews.

Practice (with clear basics)>>>>>>Practice, Practice, Practice